On Thursday, Feb. 7, HB 1472 will receive a public hearing in the House Education Committee at 8 a.m.

HB 1472 makes passing AP Computer Science in high school the equivalent of a third credit of math.  Currently, AP Computer Science is an elective and is not widely offered in high schools across the state.

By making AP CS the equivalent of a math credit, more high school students will take it to satisfy their high school math requirement.  This will, hopefully, lead to more students going into CS in college, increasing the number of qualified computer scientists in the workforce.

The proposed legislation sets up a comptetitve grant program run by OSPI to bring in qualified “co-instructors” to help teach AP CS.

The bill establishes a Computer Science Professionals Task Force to help alleviate the problem of not enough computer science professionals in the workforce.

WTIA is excited about this bill and will be testifying in support at the hearing Thursday morning.

You can weigh in with your support by emailing the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Drew Hansen, drew.hansen@leg.wa.gov to thank him for sponsoring HB 1472.  You can also help by emailing the Chair of the House Education Committee, Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos, sharontomiko.santos@leg.wa.gov and thanking her for holding the hearing and asking her to vote the bill out of the committee.